The nature of Y. Z. Kami’s art is poetry, and the nature of poetry is essentially primordial. The poetry of Kami’s art inspires contemplation and meditation similar to that brought on by the effects of light in classical architecture. Regardless of their size, Kami’s portrait paintings are monumental in character. The form of his paintings is geometric—he paints physiognomies of his subjects with a combination of gentle and solid strokes. Monumentality and geometry, the basis for architecture, are reflected both in Kami’s portrait paintings and in his series of computer manipulated images of Persian architecture.

The classical, metaphysical light found in Kami’s compositions intensifies the spectator’s uneasiness in deciphering their formative and narrative qualities. The photographic elusiveness of Kami’s art reflects the artist’s anxieties and at the same time reveals the influence of his childhood—the dry air of Iranian landscape. Like images in photographic albums, Kami’s portraits are particular and at the same time preserve a universal memory. Their poetry lives in the soul of the spectator—Kami’s skill consists of awakening it.

Despite their very different cultural backgrounds, Tuymans and Marshall find common ground in their views of making and viewing art: its capacity to convey meaning, its frozen moment captured, its physicality, its value and effect.

BOMB Magazine has been publishing conversations between artists of all disciplines since 1981. BOMB’s founders—New York City artists and writers—decided to publish dialogues that reflected the way practitioners spoke about their work among themselves. Today, BOMB is a nonprofit, multi-platform publishing house that creates, disseminates, and preserves artist-generated content from interviews to artists’ essays to new literature. BOMB includes a quarterly print magazine, a daily online publication, and a digital archive of its previously published content from 1981 onward.

Annually, BOMB serves 1.5 million online readers––44% of whom are under 30 years of age––through its free and searchable archive and BOMB Daily, a virtual hub where a diverse cohort of artists and writers explore the creative process within a community of their peers and mentors. BOMB's Oral History Project is dedicated to collecting, documenting, and preserving the stories of distinguished visual artists of the African Diaspora.

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